Hello...is anybody still out there? I've been uncharacteristerically silent here. I've been busy with a couple of large projects. Then Thursday was spent getting Zoe's boat out of the water. The motor seems to be frozen and I had to tow it with a row boat to the launch ramp to get it on a trailer and the tide was too low to get it on the trailer correctly and we...but that's another story. I've also been transferring a bunch of Whidbey Island oral histories from tape to .wav files for the South Whidbey Historical Society. I finished a website for The Shifty Sailors. And then there has been the heat wave. My computer runs warm. When it gets into the 90s outside, the inside of my house gets to warm for the little computer fans to keep up. For three days now, it's been too hot to run my computer after around 10 in the morning until around 8 in the evening. All of that has sure slowed down the blogging.

One of the projects was for Barb and Ralph at ShadowFax Jewelry. I've been making additions to their website and Barb has been making a ring for me. Actually, the ring was for Zoe.

Last night I picked up the ring, came home, and called up Zoe to ask her to go rowing. (I live on this little lake called Honeymoon Lake.) She was busy and didn't want to come until I said "pleeeeease". I picked her up (15 houses away) and we launched the boat from my back yard onto the lake. It was probably the most beautiful evening we've had on the lake. It's been hot but the lake was in shade (it was a little after 8 in the evening) and the water was like glass. We rowed a little way out and then Zoe said she wanted to row. I said that first I had something to ask her. I pulled the little white silk brocade covered ring box out, held it out to her, opened it up, and asked her to marry me.

I caught her completely by suprise. She said yes. We then rowed up, and then down, Honeymoon Lake while she tried to start breathing again.

Here is the ring.

It's in two pieces that interlock. Zoe is wearing the one with the larger diamond and, before the wedding, Barb will solder the two pieces together. When the two pieces are together, there is a little gap on the inside of the ring. Barb, as a wedding present, will put a small diamond there when she solders the rings together. Thanks, Barb, for a work of art.